


Keep It Together, Buddy

by Macchiato_Dreaming



Category: Horrortale - Fandom, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Horrortale (Undertale), Gen, Grillby's Restaurant (Undertale), Post-Undertale Neutral Route, Starvation, cuz i sure didn't, did you know that there's a tag for grillby's regulars, it could be sansby if you squint a bit i guess, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27220708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Macchiato_Dreaming/pseuds/Macchiato_Dreaming
Summary: Most Horrortale fics start years after the player leaves, around the time of Aliza's fall.What happened in between?
Relationships: Grillby & Sans (Undertale)
Kudos: 13





	Keep It Together, Buddy

**Author's Note:**

> Grillby is my favourite character and angst is my favourite genre, so... ta-daa. Written in thirty minutes, un-edited, the whole lot.

Sans let the pen fall out of his hands with a sigh, a _clack_ resounding as it hit the shed's floor.

Twenty years.

Time didn't stop jumping around after the human left- he had that damnable flower to thank for that- but still, two full decades had passed since you left the Underground with no king, no souls-

No hope.

That was the part that Sans couldn't stand. He'd been a depressed bag of bones for as long as anyone in town could remember, but seeing others slip into despair was... unpleasant.

Snowdrake Sr. had been the first to fall- his wife already gone for ages, and then his son dusted by your hand. Then Lesser dog, as the last of the Canine unit. Then Drunk Bun, then Fishy, then... well.

The bar just wasn't the same without half of the regulars. Sans was one of the few monsters who'd picked up some of Grillby's dialect— sans Red Bird's "translations", the elemental had gone silent.

The only good thing that came out of this mess was that he got to meet Toriel in this timeline. It had been nice, being able to tell knock-knock jokes in person again rather than through the door... or not at all, as the past few runs had served. She'd come back to rule, if only for one short month.

One "short" month, in which you hadn't reset, combing routes and runs for something new. Which he'd thought strange at first, since you usually did within the week or so, before he'd realized.

This _was_ your something new.

One short month, and Toriel's unpopular decree of pacifism towards the following humans got her deposed by Undyne. Made sense, he supposed. You killed MK with the captain of the guard too far away to stop you, but not far enough that she couldn't see.

And Sans had done nothing more than watch, hands in his pockets, hidden amongst the reeds.

With a shake of his head, Sans dispelled the memory. Standing up, he flicked the notebook closed. It wasn't even his _notebook,_ which he made sure never left the confines of the machine. Nah, this was just a spare bundle of loose-leaf he'd started using to balance their budget. For the first time in a long time, money was getting tight in the skeleton brothers' household. His brother was hitting yet another growth spurt, somehow (he wasn't jealous. Really.) and even with Sans giving up half his rations, it just wasn't enough. He paid a visit to Undyne again yesterday, and the response was much the same. She was working on it, Sans, stars, can't he see, can't anyone see that she's trying?

So. Grillby's, whose prices where looking more like the spider bakery by the month.

Sans didn't blame his friend— couldn't blame him, when he knew the bartender tended to give away his own rations just as often as Sans, if not more. Food had been a creeping problem since the start; no civilization could be both completely self-sustaining as well as entirely underground.

This was the first time Sans had been affected by it, though.

He shuffled out into the snow in his grey slippers. They were from Alphys a few Gyftmases ago, plucked from the dump after his trusty pink ones finally gave out. Not a fluffy, but not bad, either. Better for walking than his old slippers, which was great since he didn't have much magic to spare these days.

"Sans!"

Now there was a voice he didn't hear often outside the bar. "red bird," he greeted. "'sup?"

"It's Grillby. He," Red Bird hiccuped. Probably a little drunk, Sans noted. "He kicked us out. All of us, no warning. Ducked into the kitchen a long time right before, though. I asked if there was something wrong, but you know how he's been. Can you—?"

Sans didn't stick around to hear the end of that sentence.

* * *

The lights were off, so it was pretty obvious where the his friend was, with the flickering light emiting from under the counter. Sans reached behind to fumble for the door out of habit, not surprised to find it locked. Thank the stars for convenient shortcuts. "grillbz?" he called out.

A surprised pop, and then a warning crackle that prompted Sans to move. "c'mon, bud, don't snap at me. ain't even drunk or anythin'."

Another crackle. Sans sighed and decided to sit under the counter on the customer side. "okay, okay. somthin' _douse_ your _spirits_ , or...?"

Not even a pity laugh. "tough crowd tonight," Sans murmured.

He sat there for a while, listening to the agitated sounds of his friend's fire and watching the light on the walls wax and wane. The bartender was dimmer than usual, he noticed, which wasn't a good thing. Grillby's "usual" had been decreasing for the past two years now, even with the pinecones that Sans tried to drop off whenever he found them on the snow-covered floor. They weren't as good as freshly plucked from a tree, Grillby told him once before he went mute, but still a nice snack. Those, they had to leave on the trees to reproduce. Sans had poked him, then, teasing that he probably missed his endless supply of snacks more than the sunlight or whatever.

Speaking of which, Sans dug around in his pockets. A pencil, a single monster candy wrapper... no pinecones. Damn. He sighed.

". . . S a n s ."

Sans' head shot up like an arrow. "still here," he said somewhat incredulously. "wow. almost forgot what you sounded like, there."

". . . g o ."

He blinked. "uh. how 'bout no? you don't sound too hot, grillbz."

". . . h u r t y o u ."

"who, you? you're pretty high up on the list of 'nicest people i know', man."

A growl, this time. ". . . g o ."

Sans tapped his phalanges on the counter, thinking. "fine," he conceeded, "but only if i see you go upstairs. take a nap or something, maybe _chill out_ , heh."

No response. He took that as a negative. "red bird was worried 'bout you, y'know."

A _pop-crackle-flare_ that was brighter than anything he'd ever seen from his friend, and Sans was out of patience. "look, grillbz," he sighed, getting up, "everyone has their off days, but i promise they're better when you're on the couch and not on the—"

The sight that greeted him upon rounding the corner was _not_ pretty.

The first change was the colour. Grillby was burning so hot that he was white with tinges of blue, and Sans had to squint against the brightness. When his eyes adjusted, though, he saw Grillby's mouth was open in a silent scream, two formless flames that might've been hands tearing frantically at his soul.

"wha— grillbz, no!" Sans went in and snatched his hands up, holding them by the wrists as far away from the trembling white heart as he could. "what the fuck are you doing?"

A series of flickers. _Pain._ Sans furrowed his skull, ignoring the heat that was starting to sting his own hands. "you're hurt? where?"

Another set, too fast for him to catch completely. "melting? shit, grillby, i didn't even know you _could_ melt. what do i do?"

". . . l e a v e ."

"oh for star's sa— i'm not leaving you like this. what d'you need?"

Grillby finally met his gaze, the sheen over his glasses clearing up at the new angle. Sans pointedly kept a pokerface on throughout their staring contest, ignoring the stomach that he didn't have dropping at the red, dripping mess that used to be eyes.

". . . b u r n ."

"burn? like, somethin' to burn? keep it together, bud, just," he snagged a paper menus off the back counter. "eat that first, i'm gonna get you some stuff from your woodpile." 

Which, he found as he burst through the kitchen's back door, was completely gone. Sans clenched his fists and grabbed the axe on his way into the forest, hoping to find some larger branches he could hack off quickly for his friend who was _fucking melting—_

No, not hoping.

Sans was _determined_.

His eye lit up, the cyan a bit off as he dragged the branches down until either the axe could reach or they snapped and fell, then turned the whole pile blue. When he got back, the parts of the floor were on fire. Sans ignored them, dragging sticks and branches and leaves in the air behind him and dumping it al in front of the kneeling elemental. "eat."

His tone booked no room for argument, not that Grillby was in any shape to give any. Sans crossed his legs and hunched over, trying to catch his breath. Stars, he hadn't used that much magic in months. The toll— well, that didn't matter. He'd pay for it later with a growling stomach at two in the morning, but that was preferable to having his longtime friend Fall Down or whatever was going on there.

It didn't take long for said friend to finish, gradually turning back to warm tones of red and orange. An apologetic crackle snapped Sans out of his reverie. "be sorry for your own sorry ass, bud. what the hell was that?"

Waiting for the well-deserved explanation, Sans stamped at a lick of fire that was creeping too close for comfort before Grillby extinguished them ass with a sluggish wave of his hand. He sighed and slumped backwards, facing the ceiling. "what was that, grillby?" he echoed softly. 

He got a vague flicker. Sans poked him in the side, and Grillby exhaled a cloud of smoke.

Just when Sans was ready to fall asleep in the warmth of his friend's heat, he got his answer. " . . . I w a s b u r n i n g m y s e l f ." The unsaid question hung heavily, and Grillby sighed again. "H a v e n ' t e a t e n i n a w h i l e . F i r e g a v e o u t , s t a r t e d e a t i n g m y c o r e."

Sans almost wanted to laugh. This guy owned a restaurant, and his magic quit on him because he wasn't eating enough? Peak irony. "stop giving all your rations away, maybe."

"C a n ' t . T h e y ' r e h u n g r y ."

Won't, he corrected, but kept that to himself. "just 'cuz you get energy by burning stuff doesn't mean you don't need t'eat like the rest of us," he mumbled, trying to get the image of his friend melting out of his head. Another one for the nightmares, he supposed.

". . . Y o u ?" At his blank face, Grillby gestured towards his eye. "O n . R e d ."

Sans craned his head, checking out his reflection in the polished surface of the counter.

Gone were the white pinpricks he wore, which wasn't much of a shock. That would be from the normally-cyan eye glowing red, like Grillby had said. "oh," he offered lamely. "guess we can match."

Grillby let out a smoky wheeze that might've passed for a laugh, and they laid on the floor together.


End file.
